It would seem that
you want too many things in one editorial, especially when one works against
the others. Let me briefly explain. If you want good teachers to be rewarded
for working with the neediest children in poverty schools, you do not
accomplish that by having a system to determine merit based on test scores that
punish teachers who work with low performing and high poverty children. You
cannot use the same system of testing that effectively labels and punishes the
poor to reward teachers who work with these children.

That is the system we
have today in Mississippi and Tennessee, and that is one reason why teachers
oppose it.

Another reason is
based on research, which shows repeatedly in recent years (in Nashville,
Chicago, and New York) that "merit pay" systems to do raise
achievement as measured by test scores: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/03...

The third reason that
teachers oppose the new evaluation systems is that they are neither valid,
reliable, nor fair. The scientific evidence against teacher evaluations based
on test scores is both massive and compelling, so much so that the National
Research Council urged Arne Duncan against incentivizing its use in Race to the
Top grant applications. Of course, we know he ignored that advice, and now we
have the Rube Goldberg version of teacher evaluation that has made Tennessee
first in the pursuit of federal dollars and last in the contest for
credibility. Any system that mislabels 25 percent of teachers every year
deserves the ridicule that has been offered by those who read the research or
those who have bothered to talk with someone who has read the research.